A drawn All-Ireland hurling final was long overdue, the last one having been between Kilkenny and Waterford in 1959. Like in all drawn matches, both sets of supporters wondered after whether their team could have edged victory. To help settle some of these debates I created this visual timeline of the shots and scores.

One fascinating stat is that Kilkenny had 17 shots between the 26th minute and the 70th minute - all were on target (yielding 0-16) and one was saved by Skehill. That’s what I call accuracy.

It’s that time of the year when I do my annual round-up of the championship newcomers. In 2012 80 players made their championship debuts, 2 more than last year. In fact there has been an upward trend over the past 4 years:

In the last 24 hours, Lar Corbett and John Mullane have announced that they are leaving senior inter-county hurling. Mullane is taking an indefinite break but Corbett looks like he is hanging up his inter-county boots for good.

Everyone knows that Corbett and Mullane are in the top echelon of hurling forwards but it acutally turns out that they are the top 2 in terms of scoring efficiency in championship hurling since 2004.

What is scoring efficiency? Well if you scored 2 points in a 70 minute game, your efficiency would be 35 minutes between point.

Since 2004, Lar has scored a point from play every 16.12 minutes and Mullane every 17.56 minutes.

I was asked on Twitter today whether John Mullane is close to becoming the all-time top scorer from play in championship hurling. Unfortunately I don’t have all the records to answer that question definitively. What I can say is the Mullane is the top scorer from play since 2004. The top 20 scorers from play for the past 8 championship seasons are:

Another cut at this data is to look at the average points from play per game. Below is the list of top 20 scorers from play ordered by the average number of points per game. Players who played less than 10 games are excluded:

With about 7 minutes to go last Sunday as Kerry led by 4 points, Colm Cooper was poised to break one of the curses of Gaelic Football. The Gooch was wearing the number 13 jersey and was about to become the first ever captain wearing 13 to lift the Sam Maguire.

Fast forward about 15 minutes and it was the Dublin number 12 Bryan Cullen holding Sam aloft. The curse had struck again in spectacular fashion. Even the Kingdom couldn’t overcome the spell of the number 13 jersey.

But how many other captains have fallen foul of this curse in football and in hurling?

The Sam Maguire was first awarded in 1928 so since then there have been 83 winning captains and 83 losing captains. The chart below shows the distribution of winning captains and losing captains by jersey number (click on the chart to view it in full size):

Football captains by jersey

So for example 8 goalkeepers (blue column) have captained their team on All-Ireland final Sunday - with 4 ending up on the winning side (green column) and 4 on the losing side (red column).

So what about the feared number 13 jersey? It’s striking that it is the least popular jersey number for All-Ireland football final captains. It’s only been worn 3 times out of a possible 166. In fact there was not one captain who wore the number 13 from 1928 until 1990 (Colm O’Rourke). The other “cursed” captains were Phillip Clifford in 1999 and of course, the Gooch. This goes some way to explain why a number 13 has never held Sam aloft; the right corner forward rarely captains his team.

This indicates that the “curse” is a perhaps self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe it suggests that superstitious counties simply avoid having a number 13 as captain just in case they make it to Croker on the third Sunday in September. If each jersey number were represented equally then each would have about 11 (166/15) turns as captain - which is the case for the numbers 2, 5 and 14. But the cursed number 13 jersey falls well below that with just 3 captains wearing it.

Maybe it’s a corner forward thing? The other corner forward position is not so popular either. Only 6 captains have worn the number 15 jersey (4 winners and 2 losers).

What about the “luck” (or lack thereof) of other jersey numbers?

We hear very little about the dangers of wearing the number 7 jersey? But 9 captains have worn 7 but only 2 have lifted Sam (two Down men - DJ Kane in ‘94 and Joe Lennon in ‘68).

If you believe in the power of the jersey number and want to maximise your chances of winning, which jersey should the captain wear? Number 11 is the most successful jersey. 25 captains have worn 11 with 16 winners. Number 5 is “lucky” too with 7 winners versus 4 losers. You could also go for number 9 - 6 winners and 3 losers.

What about the Liam McCarthy cup? Which jerseys are “cursed” when it comes to lifting the Liam McCarthy cup?

Hurling captains by jersey number

Is it the feared number number 13? Well no. In fact 3 number 13s have lifted Liam - DJ Carey in 2003, Tomas Mulcahy in 1990 and Charlie McCarthy in ‘78. Five number 13s have been on the losing side - Eoin Kelly this year, Michael McGrath in ‘93, Ger Fitzgerald in ‘92, Nicky English in ‘88 and S Feeney in ‘34.

No, the number to avoid if you are a superstitious hurler is number 9. 8 captains have worn 9 but only one has lifted Liam - that was Eamon Grimes in ‘73.

If you want a “lucky” jersey for a hurling captain then pick number 12. It’s been worn 13 times with 10 of those winning. Some great number 12s to captain their teams to glory include Christy Ring (’53 and ‘54) and Eddie Keher (’69).

Ultimately those of us who are not superstitious believe that even if the next 10 captains to wear the number 13 lose, it would not have no bearing on the next guy after that to wear it. Just as tossing a coin 10 times and coming up heads does not mean that the 11th toss will yield a head.

But that’s no consolation to the Gooch.

Postscript

I tried to collate all the data for losing and winning captains but am missing the following data points:

Football

The position of the 1934 winning Galway football captain M Higgins

The position of the 1933 losing Galway football captain M Donnellan

The position of the 1930 losing Monaghan football captain P Kilroy

Hurling

The position of the 1937 losing Galway hurling captain J Duggan

The position of the 1933 losing Limerick hurling captain M Fitzgibbon

The position of the 1930 losing Dublin hurling captain J Walsh

The name position of the 1929 losing Galway hurling captain

There were 2 non-playing captains in hurling which are not included in my stats

Frank Wall in 1924

Lory Meagher in 1931

Also not included is Michael Fennelly who was a sub in 2009 and wore 21.

Around this time last year (when the 5 in-a-row dream was still alive) I had a look at the Cats half-time and full-time scores in their long unbeaten run. What the stats revealed was that Kilkenny had never gone in at half time behind. All that came to a shuddering end on the 5th of September; Tipp bucked the trend by leading at the break (albeit by a single point) and, of course, went on to inflict a first defeat in five years on the Cats.

Well here we are a year later and in the meantime Kilkenny have clocked up 3 more championship wins - and you guessed it, they led at half-time on each occasion.

So the pattern suggests that if Tipp are not ahead or at least level at half-time on Sunday, then Kilkenny will prevail. Time will tell…..

Kilkenny’s half-time and full-time results over the past 6 years

Kilkenny’s “margin of victory” in the first half and second half is shown on the right.

I think it is safe to assume that no player is going to make his championship debut on Sunday’s All-Ireland final; if so, the 2011 season will see 78 players make their championship debuts. This is 11 more than in 2010 and 17 more than 2009.

Why the big jump? Well the county with most newcomers was Westmeath with 10; the Lake County spent two years competing in the Christy Ring Cup. Antrim are next with 9 newcomers. I am not sure why Dinny Cahill gave starts to so many younsters.

Interestingly, in 2009 and 2010, Brian Cody only gave debuts to 1 new player. However in 2011, 5 Kilkenny players have had their first taste of championship action. Perhaps Cody felt the need to introduce new blood after last year’s defeat. Liam Sheedy adopted a youth policy and the Tipp team which triumphed in the 2010 final featured a number of new players (Michael Cahill, Patrick Maher and Seamus Hennessy).

There is only one game remaining in championship 2011 (barring a rare, drawn final) so I figured I’d do my annualtally of sideline cuts. So far this year, there have been 8 line-balls scored. This is 4 less than last year; the yearly total since 2004 is as follows:

As for the tally by player, Noel McGrath is the only player to score more than 1 this year. In fact McGrath has already scored a whopping 4 points from sideline cuts this summer - 1 per game. He may well add to that tally in the final.

* There is an asterix beside the 2010 tally because one of the line-balls was actually a wide - this was Ger Farragher’s cut v Offaly. But seeing as it went on the official record as a point, I’m going to record it here

When the second half of May rolls around I usually take a peek at the odds for the All-Ireland championship. So here goes for 2011. Bookie uimhir a haon sees it as a two horse race between the teams who have contested the last 2 All Ireland finals.

2011 Liam McCarthy cup odds (1)

Galway and Cork make up the number three and four positions. Galway are a bit of surprise at number three given that they have not even reached an All-Ireland semi-final since 2005. It seems that some bookies have an irrational fear that the Tribesmen may get their act together one day.

Bookie number 2 sees the Cats and Tipp as neck and neck. If you feel that Tipp are well equipped to win their first 2-in-a-row since 1965, then bookie number 2 is the man for you. Again Galway are ranked number three with the new kids on the block Dublin muscling their way to fourth.

2011 Liam McCarthy Cup odds (2)

Bookie number three has Tipp has the outright favourite with the Cats trailing at 2/1. Galway occupy the (undeserved?) number three spot followed by the Dubs and the Rebels.

It will be either by Kilkenny or Tipp again this year with Galway, the Dubs or Cork an outside chance. As usual the bookies don’t really rate last year’s Munster champions Waterford. Even though na Deise have been one of the most consistent teams not to win the All-Ireland (over the past 5 years they have contested 4 semi-finals and a final) you can back them at 14/1 if you fancy……